Ninth Cycle Antarctica Quotes

“Another surprising fact was that it was the brightest continent, despite being in darkness for most of six months of the year. That was balanced by it being daylight for the other six months.”
― JC Ryan, Ninth Cycle Antarctica

“Antarctica.  Though the width through the center of the continent was about the same as that of the US, the total area was nearly twice that of the fifty contiguous states. Antarctica was the coldest, windiest continent, and on average the highest. It was also the driest. The latter had been a surprise to some of the expedition members, who imagined it snowing constantly for six months of the year. In fact, much of the wind-driven snow featured in movies and videos of Antarctica was picked up from the ground and tossed in the strong winds, rather than falling from the sky.”
― JC Ryan, Ninth Cycle Antarctica

“As far as we know in the history of this cycle, the first human being to set foot on Antarctica was an American sealer named Capt. John Davis, in 1821." "Is it possible," asked Sinclair, "that parts of the historical record are missing?" "Anything's possible, but when scholars came across this map in Turkey in 1929, they speculated that it had been drawn from even earlier documents that are now unknown. My thought is that perhaps those earlier documents dated from the 10th Cycle somehow. What I'd like to find in the library is confirmation that the 10th Cyclers knew of Antarctica, and perhaps that they left representations of the geography of the globe that were known earlier in our own cycle.”
― JC Ryan, Ninth Cycle Antarctica

“It was nearly two centuries after that map was drawn, when the first mention of land to the south of Tierra del Fuego is mentioned in the historical record. It seems that Capt. James Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle in 1783 and caught sight of land masses that were previously undiscovered, but from the descriptions, he apparently only saw outlying islands in the Antarctica Peninsula, rather than the continent itself.”
― JC Ryan, Ninth Cycle Antarctica

“sight of a map dated 1513 that showed the continent of Antarctica, when there were no previous records of a confirmed sighting before 1819, had puzzled him for years.”
― JC Ryan, Ninth Cycle Antarctica

“Zeno map, drawn in 1380, showing the exact latitude and longitude of a number of islands, despite the fact that the instrument required to determine longitude had not been invented until 1765. A Chinese map on stone from 1137, formed on a spherical grid, as was the Camerio map of 1502, despite the fact that it was accepted in the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance that the earth was flat. The Orontius Fineus map, drawn in 1531 and The Zauche map of 1737, showing Antarctica, the existence of which was not verified until 1819, but free of the overlying ice sheet.”
― JC Ryan, Ninth Cycle Antarctica